The present invention relates to customizing individual workpieces, such as chips, flat panels or other electronic devices produced on substrates, by direct writing a custom pattern. Customization can be per device, per substrate, per batch or at some other small volume that makes it impractical to use a custom mask or mask set. In particular, it relates to customizing a latent image formed in a radiation sensitive layer over a substrate, merging standard and custom pattern data to form a custom pattern used to produce the customized latent image. A wide variety of substrates can benefit from the technology disclosed.
It is sometimes useful to permanently load an integrated circuit with custom, personalized or unique information. This usefulness has led to the development of a variety of one-time programmable or write-once memories. One example is found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,813,182, entitled “Diode-and-Fuse Memory Elements for a Write-Once Memory Comprising an Anisotropic Semi Conductor Sheet.” The crosspoint memory element described can be converted from a fuse-intact state to fuse-blown state only once, thereby providing a write-once memory.
Another example is found in US Patent Publication 2010/0001330A1, entitled “Semi Conductor Device, Data Element Thereof and Method of Fabricating the Same.” That application describes nonvolatile memories in categories of factory programmed ROMs, also called mask ROMs, and field programmable memories.
In contrast to the fused memory approaches, the development team at Micronic Laser/Micronic Mydata has previously proposed combining the features of a stepper with an SLM to optically merge standard data from a mask and custom data from the SLM. Two patents issued in this area of technology include U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,813,058 and 7,842,525, both entitled “Method and Apparatus for Personalization of Semiconductor.”
Accordingly, there is an opportunity to provide new technology for permanently loading an integrated circuit with custom, personalized or unique information. New technologies may be better integrated into production, more reliable, more flexible or more cost-effective.